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December 3, 2014

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Content Curation vs Content Aggregation to Target Website Traffic

Content curation and content aggregation are both becoming a new trend in article marketing and web publishing to target website traffic today. However, many people are at a loss on the difference between the two.

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Content Curation vs Content Aggregation to Target Website Traffic

December 3, 2014

Content curation and content aggregation are both becoming a new trend in article marketing and web publishing to target website traffic today. However, many people are at a loss on the difference between the two. They are sometimes mixed up while others think that they are somehow the same.
To clear out the confusion once and for all, it is important to first define each term and properly set the line that distinguishes content aggregation from curation.

Content Curation Defined

Wikipedia defined digital curation as the process of gathering and archiving of digital assets. With retrospect to contents, it is a process of manual collection of various web contents from different reliable sources and presenting them in a coherent manner around a specific topic to cater to a particular type of audience.

The entire process may tend to become a bit tedious at first as you familiarize with the system and as you search for trusted sources for your contents. But once you have established an efficient system of getting fresh hot topics and breaking news, you can easily create a curated content within just a few minutes and still come up with an excellent article that your readership will surely find interesting and worth-sharing with others.

Definition Aggregation Explained

Content aggregation, on the other hand, is basically almost the same as curation. But in this case, the collection of resources is automatically done using keyword phrases such the RSS feed. By subscribing to the feeds of your trusted sources, you can easily get fresh resources of articles from your selected sources.

The Notable Difference between Content Curation and Aggregation

In essence, the main difference between the two is mainly focused on how the data is collected, as well as how they are presented to the readers. If you aggregate the articles, it means that you automatically collect your articles from varied sources, using a program or software like a RSS feed, where you can get all the contents from the subscribed sites regardless of the topic and present them to your viewers.

While curation is the manual selection of the articles to ensure they fit well to your target audience and to make them suitable around the main theme of your article. Therefore, the ideal method between the two is content curation because the collected articles are more precise in catering to the needs of your readership.

Important Things You Should Keep in Mind

Content curation and aggregation are now widely used by many websites and publishing networks amidst the limited number of proficient and highly qualified news writers. While there are more writers today that offer article writing services, the percentage of top-notch writers with excellent skills in writing record-breaking news with eye-catching headlines is declining.

Aside from that, creating very informative articles loaded with facts and added with your opinion will take time and sometimes more expensive if it is outsourced. That is why many sites resort to content curation because it can save them valuable time and money.

However, many sites have gone too far and way beyond the norms when curating articles, to the extent that they breached the rights of the resource sites. It’s no surprise that many legal cases were filed in relation with content curation and aggregation.

So if you are thinking of aggregating the contents in your website, then you need to be aware of the legal implications when doing this method of creating articles. Normally, the most common legal issues are as follows:

Plagiarism

This is one of the important things that you need to keep in mind when aggregating or when curating web contents. Don’t copy the article in its entirety; this will drag you into a plagiarism case.

Copyright Infringement

Don’t use the copyrighted products of other sites. This does not only involve the use of contents or articles but also other files like photos and videos. Many large companies are in legal battles today due to copyright issues that emerged from content curation and content aggregation.

So if you are just a small to medium-sized entrepreneur or just a blogger looking for income online then you don’t want to be in a legal case against large corporate owners due to your content aggregation activities, right? That said, you must be careful in what you do when aggregating contents to avoid legal issues ahead.

Tips to Avoid Legal Problems When Curating Articles to Get Internet Traffic

While there is risk involved in content curation, you can minimize the risk by following some tips that will not only help you curate or aggregate the contents properly but protect yourself against lawsuits as well.

Avoid aggregating all your articles from only one source. This is a surefire technique in getting a lawsuit from the web owner of your source.

Curate the article rather than aggregate them. This is a better and more efficient method because your articles are more focused on a particular theme, while weeding out the articles that are off-course from your topic.

Don’t copy the headlines of the articles. Although headlines, according to US copyright law, cannot be copyrighted, some companies will still file a legal case against you from other perspectives of your content curation. They have the money to finance a legal battle, and if you have limited financial resources then you will have a slim chance of winning a legal war against them. Create your own headlines and then link to an article. You can also opt to use just a portion of the headline but not the entire phrase.

Add comments and your opinion to describe what the article is all about. This will not only spark conversation among your readers but it will also make your content unique in some ways.

Don’t copy-paste the whole article and then place a link to the source. This is not only a plagiarism case but you might also be charged of copyright infringement even if you add a link to the site. Linking back to the source does not provide guarantee that everything is okay. Some web owners may not even like the idea of linking to their site. A better option is to create a preview in a short paragraph and add your own photo (from public domain sources) and link to the article source for the full report.

Take Home Notes

Content curation may be popular and trending today, but if you immediately hop on to the bandwagon of content aggregation and content curation without first knowing the legal implications and risks, you can get yourself into legal troubles ahead. These are risks not worth-taking for a single piece of web-content that provides no assurance of generating enough cash to finance furture legal battles.

While there is still no set boundaries that separate aggregation and curation from plagiarism and illegal use of copyrighted materials, you can avoid looming legal implications by properly aggregating and curating the articles in a manner that do not violate the copyright law.

The above tips should help you curate the articles properly, and the earlier discussions above should already clear out the confusion between curating articles and aggregating web contents to target website traffic.